Study On Health Education Of Osteoporosis According To "Disease Prevention Theory" Of TCM

BackgroundNowadays, with the increasing population of the elderly in China, more and more people suffer from osteoporosis. Osteoporosis has become a medical and social problem which leads to heavy social burdens and serious danger to people's health. Health education plays an important role in prevention and treatment of osteoporosis. It is recognized that in order to design the most effective health education program it is necessary to establish people's knowledge about osteoporosis and assess health education efforts by using some psychometrically instrument such as questionnaire and scale. But there is a lack of a valid, reliable and widely-used questionnaire written in Chinese at present. Thus, we try to develop a valid, reliable and comprehensive questionnaire based on "Disease prevention theory" of TCM and cultural characteristics of south China to evaluate knowledge levels in different groups of people and health education efforts.Objective1. To develop Osteoporosis Knowledge Assessment Questionnaire (OKAQ) based on "Disease prevention theory"of TCM and cultural characteristics of south China.2. To test the reliability and validity of OKAQ.3. To provide evidences for health education by evaluating the osteoporosis knowledge of residents.Method1. An initial of item pool of 3 questions was developed by research team. After pretest, test and item analysis,28 items were selected for the final questionnaire (OKAQ).2.511 community residents from different stratums and 56 post graduate students from different medical majors were assessed with OKAQ and Osteoporosis Knowledge Test (Chinese version) from February 2009 to August 2009.3. Reliability analysis, factor analysis, item-analysis were conducted to evaluate internal reliability, test-retest reliability, structure validity, content validity and discrimination of OKAQ. Excel 2003 was operated for data-in and data management. SPSS 13.0 was operated for statistic analysis.Results1. OKAQ included 28 items which were in the domains of risk factors (7), symptoms (4), diet (5), exercise (3), knowledge about calcium supplements (2).treatment and diagnose (5), prevention of falling (2).2. The inter-investigate reliability was 0.84; The test-retest reliability of OKAQ among 55 persons was 0.69; The correlation with Osteoporosis Knowledge Test (Chinese version) was 0.41; The average index of discrimination (D) of the 28 items was 0.44. The result of factor analysis showed satisfactory construct validity.3. Age and educational background were the most important factors affecting the knowledge about osteoporosis.4. There were widespread poor knowledge about diagnosis and treatment of osteoporosis among community residents.Conclusions1. The OKAQ which attained satisfactory reliability, validity and cultural compatibility formed a basis for further application in different groups of people.2. The health education of osteoporosis should be focused on increasing knowledge about osteoporosis especially diagnosis and treatment of osteoporosis among old people, lowly educated people (lower secondary education or less) and highly educated people (master's or doctor's degree).